Abstract
The Finnish Migrant Health and Wellbeing Study (Maamu) is the first large-scale population-based health examination survey among the foreign-born population in Finland, unique also at the European level. It provides information on wellbeing of three major foreign-born groups: Russian, Somali, and Kurdish. In data collection, extra effort was put into reaching the sampled persons (n=3,000), for example by recruiting bilingual personnel to carry out the data collection, reaching participation rates as high as 70%, 51%, and 63%, respectively. A comparison group of the general population was available from a general population survey. The main challenges in fieldwork included reaching sampled persons, supervision of the fieldwork personnel, and special linguistic or cultural needs. Our experiences show that participation rate can be improved by engaging the target groups in all stages of the survey process and using several recruitment strategies, ending up with succeeding in pointing out health inequalities in the population.
Highlights
National health surveys and health monitoringNational health examination surveys have been carried out in Finland since the 1960s to monitor major public health problems and their risk factors (Borodulin et al 2015; Heistaro 2008)
The strategies to cope with different challenges during the fieldwork and in using the data of the Maamu survey are described below
The fieldwork was led by a full-time project manager, a full-time project coordinator, a part-time senior researcher and a part-time research professor, experts in conducting health surveys, located in the National Institute for Health and Welfare (THL) and working an externally funded three-year period including planning the details of the survey, leading the fieldwork period to gather the data, and reporting the basic results of the survey
Summary
National health examination surveys have been carried out in Finland since the 1960s to monitor major public health problems and their risk factors (Borodulin et al 2015; Heistaro 2008). These surveys have provided a valuable data source for epidemiological research and findings have been used for health promotion planning and implementation Health examinations provide objective data without reporting bias: this is especially important for items which often are affected by social desirability in reporting or lack of awareness by the individuals themselves All these benefits of health examination surveys compared to other data sources are especially evident among foreign-born populations
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